Raible Designs

Setting up CVS, AppFuse, JSPWiki, Tomcat, MySQL, Apache and Bugzilla on Suse 9.2

I have a few different clients right now. One of them has taked me with building a Linux box for them, configured with all the standard stuff you need for developing/testing Java apps. I decided to document the process in hopes that the next time I do it, it will be a little less painful. The box had Suse 9.2 Professional installed on it, and was unlike most Linux boxes I've setup. There was hardly anything setup on it, not even gcc - which is used to compile/install most Linux-based software. All of the this work was done remotely, using SSH and Cygwin.

NOTE: This was written after-the-fact, so it might not be up to date. I've tried to remember what I could.

Table of Contents

• [1] Installing CVS
• [2] Installing Tomcat, Ant and MySQL
• [3] Testing installation with Equinox and AppFuse
• [4] Installing JSPWiki
• [5] Installing Apache
• [6] Configuring the Apache Tomcat Connector
• [7] Installing Bugzilla

Installing CVS [#1]

When I first logged into this machine, it had virtually nothing installed. In most cases, when I've installed packages on Linux, I've found it easiest to download the source, run ./configure, make and make install because installing RPMs often gets into strange dependencies that I can never figure out. Luckily, with CVS, I was able to easily install an RPM. I uploaded the RPM for CVS from my Suse 9.2 Professional CD. I then logged in as root and installed it using "rpm -i cvs-1.11.14-20.i586.rpm".

I also setup CVSSpam, which can be configured to send us e-mails when someone commits. If you read the CVSSpam manual, you'll see that you can checkout the CVSROOT module and configure settings in there.

Installing Tomcat, Ant and MySQL [#2]

Before installing Tomcat and Ant, I had to install the JDK. There was already a JDK installed, but it was IBM's and I've had more success with Sun's. I downloaded the "self-installing binary" (v. 1.4.2_06) from http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html and installed it in the /usr/java directory. I then created a jdk-1.4.2 symlink to the "j2sdk1.4.2_06" directory in this same directory. Next, I changed the Java-related environment variables in /etc/profile.d/alljava.sh to point to /usr/java/jdk1.4.2.

Installing Tomcat and Ant was fairly easily. I just downloaded the binaries and unzipped them into the following directories.

• Ant 1.6.2 - /opt/tools/apache-ant-1.6.2
  
• Tomcat 5.0.30 - /opt/tools/jakarta-tomcat-5.0.30

I then created "ant" and "tomcat" symlinks in the /opt/tools directory to point to these installation. Next, I created environment variables for ANT_HOME and CATALINA_HOME by appending the following to the bottom of the /etc/profile file:

#
# Java Development Enviroment Variables
#
export TOOLS_HOME=/opt/tools
export ANT_HOME=$TOOLS_HOME/ant
export CATALINA_HOME=$TOOLS_HOME/tomcat
export PATH=$ANT_HOME/bin:$CATALINA_HOME/bin:$PATH

For MySQL, I installed version 4.1.7 using an RPM. I created /etc/my.cnf file with the following settings - so AppFuse/UTF-8 would work, as well as Transactions:

[mysqld]
default-table-type=innodb
default-character-set=utf8

Testing installation with Equinox and AppFuse [#3]

After installing Ant, Tomcat and MySQL, I was able to successfully checkout Equinox (and AppFuse) into my home directory and run all tests against Tomcat.

One thing I did have to change in the default AppFuse setup was the MySQL Driver. Suse uses IPv6, which doesn't work with the current JDBC Driver in AppFuse 1.7 (or prior). You can get the latest one at http://dev.mysql.com.

Installing JSPWiki [#4]

Installing and configuring JSPWiki was fairly easy. I downloaded version 2.1.115-alpha, extracted its contents and renamed JSPWiki.war to wiki.war. Then I copied it to $CATALINA_HOME/webapps. After Tomcat expanded it, I modified the $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/wiki/WEB-INF/jspwiki.properties file and changed a few settings:

jspwiki.fileSystemProvider.pageDir = /opt/tools/tomcat/webapps/wiki/data
jspwiki.basicAttachmentProvider.storageDir = /opt/tools/tomcat/webapps/wiki/data/files
jspwiki.translatorReader.allowHTML = true
jspwiki.templateDir = blueman

I have a custom template that I use for most clients. It's called "blueman" and I downloaded it and extracted it into the $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/wiki/templates directory. I also copied the sample pages that come with JSPWiki into the /opt/tools/tomcat/webapps/wiki/data directory.

Installing Apache [#5]

Installing Apache was the hardest part of this whole setup. Not because the installation was hard, but figuring out how to do it was. There are no pre-built binaries for Apache. I tried to install RPMs, but dependency failures kept happening and I couldn't get them resolved. I couldn't compile from source because there was no C-compiler installed. After much googling and a lot of research, I discovered I could change where YaST looked for its installation files. The default was set to look on the CDs.

To change the location, I typed "yast2", selected Software >> Change Source of Installation, and added a new FTP Source with the following settings:

Protocol: FTP
Server Name: ftp.suse.com
Directory on Server: pub/suse/i386/9.1 (I tried 9.2, but it didn't resolve)
Authentication: anonymous

I then turned off the other 2 CD sources. When I first did this, I used "yast" rather than "yast2" and it didn't seem to have any effect. In fact, I think I rebooted before I even tried "yast2", but then I read about it on some website, tried "yast2" and found I could easily install a number of programs using this utility.

After configuring the new source, I went to Software >> Installed and Remove Software and searched for "apache2". I selected the following modules to install:

• apache2
• apache2-jakarta-tomcat-connectors
• apache2-mod_perl
• apache2-prefork
• apache2-worker

The last 2 are required by apache2. After installing all of these, Apache 2.0.49 was installed and I received a page when I navigated to the host's IP address. It turned out to be an error page, but only because there was no index.html file in /srv/www/htdocs. I created a symlink from htdocs/index.html to $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/ROOT/index.jsp (a simple static page) to solve this issue.

Configuring the Apache Tomcat Connector [#6]

I found most of the information for this section from reading the /usr/share/doc/packages/apache2-jakarta-tomcat-connectors/README.SuSE file. I've used both mod_jk and mod_jk2 in the past, but since this file said "The module JK2 is only experimental in this package", I opted to configure the mod_jk connector. Below are the steps I went through to configure Apache2 to connect to Tomcat 5.0.30 on Suse 9.2:

1. Create a file named jk.conf in the /etc/apache2/conf.d directory with the contents below. This file contains the URI mappings to tell Apache what URLs to direct to Tomcat. Many of the samples I found go a bit further and map the full directories in Tomcat, but since the apps deployed are entirely self-contained, it seems to make more sense to just do the JkMount.

<IfModule mod_jk.c>

    JkWorkersFile /etc/apache2/workers.properties
    JkLogFile /opt/tools/tomcat/logs/mod_jk.log

    # Log level to be used by mod_jk
    JkLogLevel error

    # AppFuse - the 2nd line eliminates the need for a
    # trailing slash on the URL
    JkMount /appfuse/* ajp13
    JkMount /appfuse ajp13

    # Equinox - the 2nd line eliminates the need for a
    # trailing slash on the URL
    JkMount /equinox/* ajp13
    JkMount /equinox ajp13

    # JSPWiki - the 2nd line eliminates the need for a
    # trailing slash on the URL
    JkMount /wiki/* ajp13
    JkMount /wiki ajp13

</IfModule>

After configuring Apache+Tomcat, I blocked port 8080 on the firewall and changed AppFuse to use port 80 as its default port. This is easy to do - just create a .build.properties file in your home directory with the following contents:

http.port=80

Then run "ant clean deploy". This will affect all of your AppFuse-based projects.

2. Create an /etc/apache2/workers.properties file with the following contents:

#
# You should configure your environment slash... ps=\ on NT and / on UNIX
# and maybe something different elsewhere.
#
ps=/

#
# The workers that your plugins should create and work with
#
# Add 'inprocess' if you want JNI connector
worker.list=ajp13

#------ DEFAULT ajp13 WORKER DEFINITION ------------------------------
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#

#
# Defining a worker named ajp13 and of type ajp13

# Note that the name and the type do not have to match.
#
worker.ajp13.port=8009
worker.ajp13.host=localhost
worker.ajp13.type=ajp13
#
# Specifies the load balance factor when used with
# a load balancing worker.
# Note:
#  ----> lbfactor must be > 0
#  ----> Low lbfactor means less work done by the worker.
worker.ajp13.lbfactor=1

#
# Specify the size of the open connection cache.
#worker.ajp13.cachesize

3. Add the module "jk" to the list of apache2 modules APACHE_MODULES. It can be done by YaST in the "Editor for /etc/sysconfig Files" or by editing the file /etc/sysconfig/apache2. If you have done it by editing the file. The apache2 configuration has to be updated by the command:

SuSEconfig --module apache2 

4. Make sure the server tomcat is stopped.

5. Change CATALINA_BASE to "/opt/tools/tomcat". It can be done by YaST in the "Editor for /etc/sysconfig Files" or by editing the file /etc/sysconfig/j2ee. (I don't think this is necessary since I didn't install Tomcat using YaST).

6. Start Tomcat and restart Apache using "rcapache2 restart".

Installing Bugzilla [#7]

To install Bugzilla, I downloaded the 2.18rc3 version and extracted it to the /opt/tools directory. I then moved it to /opt/tools/bugzilla and cd'd into it. Then I ran "./checkconfig.pl" and proceeded to install the Perl modules it told me to. Then I modified the "localconfig" file in this directory. I changed the "$webservergroup" to be "" since I couldn't figure out what group Apache's files were supposed to belong too. I also changed the "$db_user" to be "root" since I couldn't get the "bugs" user to work. The group and db_user are things that I still need to fix - any advice is appreciated. I changed the "$webservergroup" to be "www" (thanks John Norman) and I had to use old_password() on the "bugs" user to get bugzilla to work with MySQL 4.1.7.

Next, I edited the /etc/apache2/default-server.conf file so "/bugzilla" would be recognized. I added the following right after the configuration for the "/icons" directory.

Alias /bugzilla "/opt/tools/bugzilla"
<Directory "/opt/tools/bugzilla">
        Options FollowSymLinks Indexes Includes +ExecCGI
        AllowOverride All
        DirectoryIndex index.cgi
        Order allow,deny

        Allow from all
</Directory>

Then, at the bottom of the file, I added:

AddHandler cgi-script .cgi

I restarted Apache and I kept getting an error that Apache couldn't open the /opt/tools/bugzilla/.htaccess file. I tried running "chmod +r", "chmod 644", "chmod 755" and even "chmod 777", but no luck. Finally, I googled and found that running "chmod 701 /opt/tools/bugzilla" solved the problem.

Hopefully this will help anyone else trying to setup these tools on a remote Suse box.

RE: J2EE App Server Security

Dion and Christian are talking about J2EE App Server Security. Specifically, they are talking about setting up standard container-managed security. J2EE allows you to specify security settings in your web.xml, but to make those work - you have to configure your app server. For Tomcat, this is pretty easy, and Resin makes it easy too. However, the XML you have to write for both is quite different and some app servers don't even let you write XML - instead you have to use their "admin console". Personally, I think most admin consoles are a pain in the ass. I'd prefer to write a single XML file to configure the server. Some servers require several files just to authenticate against a database.

AppFuse uses both container-managed authentication and a JNDI DataSource. This means you have to configure the appserver in order to run AppFuse. On many servers, this is difficult to do (or, they didn't pass my 10 minute test at least). I like servers where I can deploy a couple of JARs into a directory and a single XML file to configure the server. Tomcat and Resin come to mind.

After using Acegi for the last month, I think I'm going to ditch the "standard" J2EE security stuff. I managed to port AppFuse to use Acegi last month - and didn't have to change a single line of security-related code. The hardest parts of integrating Acegi where 1) figuring out how to build it from CVS (there's currently two src trees) and 2) excluding URLs. Once I got these two things solved, I had to add an "enabled" column to my user table, but that's about it. This is awesome b/c it means you can always port back to CMA with very few code changes.

I used to think that using the container's resources was a good thing, but I'm starting to change my mind. Spring allows you to configure a DataSource connection pool just like Tomcat does, so there's not as many benefits as there once was. Being able to drop a WAR into a directory and have your app work without configuring the server is a very nice thing. What do you think? Are there any advantages to using a container's services anymore? I suppose there is for distributed or clustered apps, but that's all I can think of.

Welcome to 2005

Happy New Year y'all! 2004 was a great year for this website. It was also an awesome year personally. I have a new baby, a new house and a new bus. I learned way more than I thought I would about Spring, WebWork, Tapestry and JSF. And I spoke at a couple conferences, which I certainly didn't anticipate. In 2005, I hope to step back a bit and spend less time working and more time being a good father and husband. Restoring the bus is my major goal I hope to accomplish this year.

Here's this site's stats for 2004:

If you could add another framework to AppFuse, which would it be?

If you could add another web framework option to AppFuse, which one would it be and why? Please keep in mind it already includes Struts, Spring, WebWork, JSF and Tapestry.

AppFuse Tip: Backup and Restore Data with DbUnit

One of the nice things about having DbUnit integrated into AppFuse is you can easily import and export data. I've often used this feature to export a test database (or even production) into my development environment to try and reproduce data-related errors. Here's how to do it:

1. Run "ant db-export -Ddatabase.host=otherhost". This exports all the data into an XML file named "db-export.xml" in the current directory.
2. Run "ant db-load -Dfile=db-export.xml" to import the data into your local database.

I've used the db-export task for other things too - like populating the database through the UI and then updating the test data. All you have to do for this is to copy the db-export.xml file to metadata/sql/sample-data.xml.

NOTES:

• For Oracle, you need to add a "schema" attribute to all the <dbunit> tasks in build.xml. You also need to do this for the "db-export" target for PostgreSQL.
• If you want to limit the tables exported (i.e. from a production database), simply nest a bunch of <table name="table_name"/> elements inside the <export> element.
• If you get errors about foreign key constraints when running "db-load" after "db-export" - you need to re-arrange the order of your tables in the imported XML file.
• To clear out tables before your tests, add an empty <table name="table_name"/> element to sample-data.xml.

XmlHttpRequest

Dave quotes it, Charles writes it. XmlHttpRequest is the topic at hand and how it will help us build the next generation of web UIs. I've used Brent Ashley's JSRS Library to do some fancy UI work (one drop-down populates another) last year. It worked well in combination with Erik Hatcher's articles: Remote scripting using a servlet and Sending rich messages between client and server using asynchronous messaging. The project was AppFuse based, so I have the code if someone really wants it.

An example of XmlHttpRequest is in Roller itself - in the twisty comments you see on this site. For those who have used them, you probably know they're somewhat buggy. With all this talk of XmlHttpRequest, maybe it's high-time to revisit Roller's implemenentation and see if the technology has gotten any better. In reality, I know it hasn't - it's the browsers that are the problem and there hasn't been an update to IE in quite some time. My code could probably use some work though. If you want to dig in and check it out, here's the xmlextras.js that does the heavy lifting and comment-specific JavaScript.

After looking at this code this morning, it looks like there's different methods being used for the different browsers.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//// XML Document loading

function loadXMLDocument(aURL, aCallback)
{ 
  gMediaCallback = aCallback;
  
  if (window.ActiveXObject) {
    // Internet Explorer XML loading syntax
    gMediaDoc = new ActiveXObject(getControlPrefix() + ".XmlDom");
    gMediaDoc.onreadystatechange = onMediaReadyStateChange;
    gMediaDoc.async = true;
    gMediaDoc.load(aURL);
  } else {
    // Mozilla XML loading syntax
    gMediaDoc = document.implementation.createDocument("", "", null);
	var xmlHttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
    xmlHttp.overrideMimeType("text/xml");
	xmlHttp.open("GET", aURL, false);
	xmlHttp.send(null);
    gMediaDoc.loadXML(xmlHttp.responseXML.xml);
    onMediaLoaded();
  }
}

I wonder if there's a common way that can be used for both browsers? BTW, 99% of the code for these comments was borrowed from Joe Hewitt.

Later: Another article covering this technology: Using the XML HTTP Request object. Hat tip to Carl.

Speaking at MySQL Users Conference

Looks like I'll be speaking at the MySQL User Conference in April 2005. This conference is at the Santa Clara Convention center, where SD West was last year.

Congratulations! You have been accepted as a presenter for
the MySQL Users Conference 2005 at the Westin Santa Clara, Santa Clara,
California, April 18, 2005 - April 21, 2005.

The following has been accepted as a 3 hour tutorial class for the
event:

"Developing Test-Driven Web Applications With Spring and Hibernate"

The tutorial classes are scheduled for Monday, April 18, and we will
send the exact time schedule shortly.

They wanted a fancier title than all the AppFuse ones I had cooked up - that's why it's titled Developing Test-Driven Web Applications With Spring and Hibernate. Now I just need to figure out what kind of app to develop in 3 hours. With AppGen and AppFuse Generator, it takes a lot of fun out of the development process. Or maybe it puts the fun back in?

If there's a JUG nearby that'd like to know a bit more about AppFuse or Spring, let me know.

The Future of the J2EE Web Tier

There's a chat in a few hours on the future of the J2EE Web Tier. I'll be sitting in and hoping to learn something. The alignment of the JSP EL and JSF EL will be nice - but we really want HTML Templating for JSF - like Tapestry. After developing Tag Soup JSPs for JSF and HTML-editor-friendly pages for Tapestry, I can say there's definitely a big difference. Tapestry templates are much easier to read. However, if you have an existing JSP app, you can migrate to JSF easier.

Fix CSS max-width in IE

Anthony has a good post on using this minmax script to fix a CSS bug in IE. If you're using the Sunsets theme (like I am) with Roller - you might want to add this to your page templates. I've patched this site - thanks Anthony!

To patch your theme, create a page with name "_minmax.js" and link "minmax.js", populate it with the script contents and then add the following in your theme's <head>:

    <script type="text/javascript" src="$ctxPath/page/$userName/minmax.js"></script>

You can also create CSS pages for your site using a similar technique. While we're talking about IE bugs, you might want to know that <script/> doesn't work in IE, that's why you always have to add the closing </script> element.

It's Dumping in Colorado

The mountains and ski resorts are getting dumped on right now. Here in Denver, we have about 3-4 inches and it's still snowing. It started yesterday and it's cold (14°F) right now. Check out this ski report for Vail Resorts this morning.

Vail (www.vail.com)
Temp. at 5am MST: -1F/-18C
Surface Conditions: Powder
Snowfall in last 24 hours: 10in.
Snowfall in last 7 days: 34in.
Mid-Mountain Base: 28in.
Percent of Terrain Open: 15%

Beaver Creek (www.beavercreek.com)
Temp. at 5am MST: -1F/-18C
Surface Conditions: Powder
Snowfall in last 24 hours: 11in.
Snowfall in last 7 days: 38in.
Mid-Mountain Base: 39in.
Percent of Terrain Open: 22%

Keystone (www.keystoneresort.com)
Temp. at 5am MST: -1F/-18C
Surface Conditions: Powder/Packed Powder
Snowfall in last 24 hours: 4in.
Snowfall in last 7 days: 13in.
Mid-Mountain Base: 28in.
Percent of Terrain Open: 13%

Breckenridge (www.breckenridge.com)
Temp. at 5am MST: -1F/-18C
Surface Conditions: Powder/Packed Powder
Snowfall in last 24 hours: 3in.
Snowfall in last 7 days: 17in.
Mid-Mountain Base: 22in.
Percent of Terrain Open: 14%

You can see that 1) there's not much terrain open and 2) it's fricken cold up there. Raible Designs has a "9-inch rule", which means if it snows 9 inches or more, all employees get the day off to go skiing. I think I'll wait until January to make this a mandatory rule.

Looks like the commute should be fun this morning. Days like today make it nice to have a 20-step commute (40 with a stop at the coffee pot).